Iran: The Latest

This has been a year when the world lurched from crisis to crisis at breakneck speed. Trump back in power. America wavering on Europe and Ukraine. China strutting with new confidence. Russia grinding on. Iran bombed. Gaza paused. If you feel dizzy you are not alone. Venetia is joined by Adelie Pojzman-Pontay from Ukraine the Latest and Asia correspondent Allegra Mendelson to take a sharp eyed look...

On this week’s episode of Battle Lines Global Health Security, international photojournalist Simon Townsley joins Arthur Scott-Geddes and Sophie O’Sullivan to share his most memorable photographs of 2025.  From visiting mpox quarantine zones in Sierra Leone, to bat caves infected with marburg virus, Simon explains the value and pitfalls of ‘parachute’ journalism.   This year al...

In this special festive edition of Battle Lines, Roland Oliphant and Dominic Nicholls cut through the tinsel to tell a story that actually matters. In aid of, The Not Forgotten, a charity born out of the carnage of the First World War, they are joined by Hari Budha Magar, a Gurkha veteran who lost both his legs while serving in Afghanistan. From a remote village in Nepal to the batt...

Former UK ambassador Laurie Bristow speaks to Roland and delivers a blunt and unsettling warning about the state of the world and Britain’s place in it. Drawing on more than three decades at the heart of the Foreign Office, including some of the most dangerous postings of modern times, he argues we are living through the most volatile and complex global moment of our lifetimes. From war returning...

Have you ever been scammed? If you have, the chances are that it happened somewhere in Asia. Often overseen by Chinese criminal gangs, the places where these scams are happening have become hubs for people trafficking, drugs trade, and prostitution. On today's episode, Venetia speaks to Global Health Security Correspondent Sarah Newey, who has visited Sin City in Laos, a scam centre hotspot. She t...

Today, Britain’s MI6 chief delivered a chilling message: the frontline is now everywhere. Look around the world and the evidence is overwhelming. From Ukraine to Gaza to Sudan, violence is spreading fast and growing more lethal by the month. New data from ACLED shows that Europe is now the most intense conflict zone on the planet - a fact that should shock anyone in the West still clinging to the...

Britain's military has seen better days - that much everyone can agree on. Enter ex-Royal Marine Commando Colonel Alistair Scott Carns, aka Wee Al, the UK's brand new Minister for Armed Forces. Part of the fresh batch of Labour MPs who entered Parliament in 2024, he has risen quickly through the Ministry of Defence and is considered "one to watch". Carns sat down with The Telegraph's associated de...

As global landmine casualties reach a four-year high, Venetia is joined by Major General James Cowan, former British Army commander in Iraq and Afghanistan and now CEO of The HALO Trust. He lays out why he believes foreign aid and defense are inseparable, how clearing weapons post-conflict shapes global health and security outcomes, and why Britain’s safety begins far beyond its own borders. From...

Donald Trump has detonated a political earthquake with a National Security Strategy that doesn’t just tweak America’s global role, it torches seven decades of US foreign policy. In a move that’s left European allies stunned and scrambling, Trump’s new blueprint casts Europe as weak, directionless and on the brink of “civilisational erasure,” while pointedly avoiding calling Russia a threat. And gu...

Ajax was meant to be the British Army’s modern embodiment of the mighty Greek warrior, strong, unbreakable, unstoppable. Instead, it’s become a national embarrassment. This week the Army suspended the entire fleet after 31 soldiers fell ill inside vehicles that were supposed to protect them. We’re talking tingling hands, ringing ears and troops vomiting on Salisbury Plain. It’s a £6.3 billion “wor...

Nigeria is facing a security crisis. Extremist violence, mass kidnappings and deepening food insecurity has created what the UN has called the country’s worst emergency in a decade. Recent weeks have seen a spate of high profile abductions, including 300 schoolgirls and teachers from Niger state. Security officials now fear these pupils could be used as human shields to deter a military interventi...

French President Emmanuel Macron has announced the return of military service in the country, 25 years after mandatory national service was phased out. And he's not alone, with the German parliament set to vote on similar measures, while Belgium and the Netherlands have already introduced voluntary military service. But what do the measures entail exactly? How effective, or even necessary are they...

Donald Trump’s latest effort to end the war in Ukraine unleashed a week of diplomatic turmoil. And some of the most dramatic diplomatic twists and turns bear the finger prints of one man: Jonathan Powell, the British national security advisor, not only led a diplomatic rescue mission to recast Donald Trump’s original Russian-inspired proposals in Ukraine and Europe’s favour. His influence can also...

With conflicts raging around the world, aid budgets are being slashed in favour of defence spending.  But experts are warning that cutting aid may not just hurt the world’s most vulnerable, it could make life in Britain more dangerous. This week, Lord Dannatt, the former head of the British Army, tells Venetia and Arthur why cutting aid to boost defence actually makes us less safe.  Plus...

Xi Jinping is the most authoritarian and longest serving Chinese leader since Mao - and probably the most powerful man on earth. But what makes him tick, and what does is upbringing tell us about his behaviour today? Joseph Torigian spent nine years researching this question. The result is The Party's Interests Comes First - a biography of Xi's father, Xi Zhongxun. Torigan sat down with Roland Oli...

TNT, the unglamorous but indispensable ingredient of modern warfare, is now in critically short supply and Britain is feeling the consequences. A new parliamentary report warns that the UK’s war-fighting readiness is being eroded not only by dwindling stockpiles but by its failure to meet Nato Article 3 obligations to maintain the capacity to resist armed attack. The shortage of TNT is particularl...

More children are being killed by explosive weapons than at any other time in history, according to a major new report by Save the Children and Imperial College London. It’s clear there has been a shift in the way wars are being fought, and children are being caught in the crosshairs.  In this exclusive interview, Arthur and Paul ask George Graham, Executive Director for Global Impact at Save...

America is flexing its muscles in the Caribbean and the world is holding its breath. Washington has trained its sights on Socialist-run Venezuela, and the arrival of the colossal USS Gerald Ford has sparked the biggest military buildup since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Operation Southern Spear is now under way: a dozen warships, thousands of troops, and a barrage of so-called “anti-narco” strikes th...

The Syrian civil war raged for years, wrecked a nation, and then quietly vanished from the headlines. Last December, a jihadist faction once aligned with Al-Qaeda toppled Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship. Their leader, al-Sharaa is now President of Syria and he met Donald Trump this week in the Oval Office, yes, really. Al-Sharaa is calling it a “new era” for Syria, no enemies, just friends. He’s co...

For more than two years a vicious civil war has been raging in Sudan. It’s been defined by massacres, rapes, displacement, and starvation.  As the UN has long said, it is one of the worst humanitarian crises of the 21st century. Most media didn’t pay attention until Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab published satellite images of bodies and bloody sand. Suddenly, there was hard visual evidence...

Sanctions, nationwide protests, even Israeli airstrikes haven’t broken the Iranian regime. Could a drought finally bring the Islamic Republic to its knees? Iran is running out of water and now the president has warned that if the rains don’t come, all of Tehran may have to be evacuated. This isn’t a war fought with bombs or bullets, it’s far more devastating. Roland Oliphant is joined by The Teleg...

Germany is rearming, and fast. A sentence that once sent shivers down Europe’s spine is now a shocking reality. This isn’t the Germany of old; it’s a nation powering up for a new era of danger. With Putin’s war machine grinding on, Berlin’s gone from pacifist to powerhouse, pledging a staggering 3.5% of GDP to defence by 2029, outpacing the UK. So what’s behind this dramatic transformation? And is...

In Ukraine, tens of thousands of soldiers have returned from the frontlines without limbs. Most of them will require support in some form for the rest of their lives.  But not all of those amputations are purely the result of direct hits on the battlefield. Ukraine’s Chief Military Surgeon has said the improper use of tourniquets could be responsible for as many as one in four lost limbs.&nbs...

Donald Trump’s been on a triumphant tour of Asia, shaking hands, signing peace deals, and lapping up royal treatment fit for, well, himself. From Tokyo Tower lit in red, white and blue to 250 cherry trees gifted in his honour, it was a spectacle of ego and diplomacy rolled into one. In South Korea, they even played YMCA as he strutted past a military band. Trump’s “12 out of 10” meeting with Xi Ji...

There’s a rhythm to wartime atrocity. First come the warnings, ignored, dismissed. Then the whispers, the shaky videos, the satellite images that no one can quite believe. And finally, the horrific truth. That’s where we are today in el-Fasher, Sudan, where the militia calling itself the Rapid Support Forces is perpetrating a massacre that can literally be seen from space. The crime has refocused...